73 and good luck in the contest,

John WN9T

Anyhow, my family often does refer to me as “the mad scientist”; as do they also fear entering my shop/office thinking the seemingly miles of different wire might attack!! I constantly find myself trying to fiqure out how to interface this with that, how to control it with my pc, etc…

I have to admit though, I have had a few yrs here and there that I let my gear sit and collect dust but; last year I decided to dig it all up again. To my surprise, it didn’t hold the appeal it used too!! I was surfing the web, looking to see what was new in ham land and wandered across several sites dedicated to software defined radio, or SDR. I was curious, so I ordered and built a kit… It worked..wahoo; so I built another, and another. Since then I’ve been going full steam and don’t see an end to what is possible in ham radio with the technology these days.

I personaly think there ought to be some kind of organized “drive” of sorts to recruit new blood into the ranks. It seems that some good creative marketing could accomplish this. I would always find a way to make myself availible to anyone, old or young that was truly interested in the hobby, and that’s what I think it should be about….

73 –

Mike KB8DLM

The “just work em” strategy – tonight I operated NA QSO (CW) for one hour, S&P only, looking for WY – my 50th state on 80m. I totally agree with the “weak signal” strategy. I tune right past the blockbusters, and look for the weak ones. And sure enough, I got WY!

I am looking forward to the RTTYers going away tomorrow to make room for the Olivia guys again. 73,

Larry N8KU

I assume that this is mostly because a large part of the licensed hams in this country (and the world) are inactive. Also, as you hinted, many hams only seem interested in contesting, DXing, or emComm stuff.

However, I will continue to put out a lot of CQ’s, answer CQ’s, and have real ham radio QSO’s. I don’t do contests – they bore me. I do like to DX but I prefer to actually TALK to the DX station. My latest DX QSO was a fellow in Belgium who I had a 1 hour ragchew with while running 50w on 20mtrs. His signal varied from S-3 to S-7 during the contact. Most of my QSO’s are stateside but I enjoy DX QSO’s just as much.

I applaud anyone who looks for and/or works weak stations!!

—Gary WB8ROL

I suspect somewhere around 40 pct or more of current hams seldom operate anything but contests, QSO Parties, or nets. I’ve even had people I’ve tried to talk to (on various modes) who have flat told me they don’t like to chat – they just like to get signal reports and QSL cards.

Many others don’t call CQ. They listen a lot – to empty bands (not necessarily closed bands – just empty). A lot of hams have been told to listen more by the A.R.R.L. so they take it to heart. What good does it do to ONLY listen on a band where there is little or no activity? If the bands were hopping with activity then that might apply but many operators turn on their radio and if they DON’T hear something – they simply turn it off and go do something else. It would never occur to them to actually put out a CQ and take a chance that a, God forbid, less than S-9 signal might come back to them!

And you would not believe the number of hams who would NEVER go back to a weak signal UNLESS it was a NEW DX country or a contest point. Even on digital bands with modes that work well for weak signals many hams just go after strong signals – even when the weak signals are 100% copyable! And when they talk to a strong signal – the moment the signal goes below S-9 they say “band is getting weaker we better sign out!”

Even still, there are still many real hams out there. There are still experimenters and builders. They are less in number perhaps than decades ago but they still exist.

Long live real ham radio!

—Gary WB8ROL

I used to routinely leave a large, 800V secondary transformer running, for “experimental” purposes. The experiments consisted of taking all the components that I had salvaged from old TV sets – resistors, capacitors, etc. and one by one, placing them across the terminals (two screws in the small piece of plywood the transformer had been mounted on.)

Some components did nothing. A “good” component was one that glowed or smoked before disintegrating. A “great” one would actually pop or send pieces flying.

One day I went to reach across the crowded workbench without looking, and my hand rested exactly on the two terminals. It burned a welt into the ball of my thumb, and this time the smoke was human flesh.

I turned it off, threw in in the trash, and moved on to the next experiment.

*I am employed by an HP reseller; however, the views expressed in this post are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.